It has been revealed that Charles River Laboratories will be conducting a 13-week preclinical safety study on behalf of Akesis Pharmaceuticals, an emerging diabetes drug-development company. No terms of the deal were disclosed.
The contract research organisation (CRO) has only just recently completed a 28-day preclinical safety program on the novel vanadium compound, called AKP-020.
Akesis said it has shown "considerable potential" as a treatment for Type II diabetes. Last month the firm announced positive results from a preliminary analysis of its Phase IIa clinical trial for AKP-020 for this indication.
The services division of Galapagos, BioFocus DPI, has been selected to provide compound management and related services to Sepracor, a firm that focuses on developing new drugs for respiratory and central nervous system disorders.
Galapagos said the contract is worth €1m over three years. During this time BioFocus DPI will receive, register, and store selected compounds from Sepracor's proprietary compound library. The firm will also plate and replicate them. All this will be conducted from its US facility in San Francisco.
"Our compound management site has been able to broaden its customer base over the last year, and with this agreement we further expand our list of pharmaceutical companies", said Galapagos CEO Onno van de Stolpe.
Current customers include the government bodies the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as a number of biotech and pharmaceutical companies.
Drug giant AstraZeneca has elected to extend its research and development agreement with Palatin Technologies for a period of time that was not disclosed.
Since 2007 Palatin has been contracted by AstraZeneca in the discovery, development and commercialisation of compounds that target melanocortin receptors, with a view to developing new obesity drugs.
The rate of obesity has substantially escalated over the past decade and is expected to continue on this trajectory. Over 1.1bn adults and over 150m children worldwide are overweight, and over 300m adults are categorised as obese.
Under the amendment, Palatin has agreed to license additional compounds and associated intellectual property to AstraZeneca, and will in turn receive development and regulatory milestone payments if any additional compound advances into human clinical trials, and sales target milestone payments and stepped royalties if any additional compound is commercialised. AstraZeneca is responsible for product commercialisation, discovery and development costs.
